This tool is invaluable when you are running low on disk space and you want to find out where all of your storage is being used.

Check it out!

]]>https://alanchavis.com/2013/10/26/disk-inventory-x/feed/0avalanchisImageImproving unit test coverage with NCrunchhttps://alanchavis.com/2013/10/25/improving-unit-test-coverage-with-ncrunch/
https://alanchavis.com/2013/10/25/improving-unit-test-coverage-with-ncrunch/#respondFri, 25 Oct 2013 18:13:43 +0000http://alanchavis.com/?p=360Continue reading →]]>My team has been doing a lot to improve unit test coverage lately, and one of the tools we rely on is NCrunch.

NCrunch provides real time feedback on your unit tests and coverage by running your tests in the background while you edit your code.

This provides a near instantaneous view of which lines of code are covered and what tests are failing and which lines are causing them to fail.

Wonder no more! WinDirStat will show you exactly which folders contain the files that are taking up the most space on your drive.

This is a great tool to use whenever you want to clean up your drive. It will display a sorted list of your folders and show you what percentage of space each one is using, then you can drill down into the folders to find the larger files and optionally delete them.

]]>https://alanchavis.com/2010/10/02/windows-phone-developer-launch/feed/0avalanchisWindows Phone 7 Developer LaunchMercurial and Kilnhttps://alanchavis.com/2010/09/17/mercurial-and-kiln/
https://alanchavis.com/2010/09/17/mercurial-and-kiln/#respondFri, 17 Sep 2010 17:21:17 +0000http://www.alanchavis.com/?p=153Continue reading →]]>I’ve been working with the FogBugz bug tracker for quite a while now and I noticed that they offer a Mercurial based online version control system named Kiln.

I’ve been wanting to adopt one of these new-fangled distributed version control systems for some time now, so I decide to dive in and find out what all the fuss was about.

I read Joel Spolsky‘s excellent Mercurial tutorial, Hg Init and then set about installing Mercurial clients on all of my various workstations.

I ended up with TortoiseHG on my PC and MacHg on my Mac and so far I’m finding it to be a very flexible and easy to use system.

If you’re using Subversion or some other old-school version control system you should definitely take a look at Mercurial or GIT and see what you’re missing out on!

Dropbox is a program that lets you easily share and sync files amonst all of your computers (and phone).

It creates a folder that is automatically synchronized with all of the computers that you’ve installed Dropbox on. You can create a folder hierarchy and there is a public folder that you can put files that you want to share with others.

When you put a file into the public folder, you can right click and obtain a URL for that file, then you can send that URL to someone in an email or IM, and they can access the file just by clicking the link.

You can share folders with other Dropbox users, make it easy to share files amongst a group of people.

It also keeps a version history of the files allowing you to go back in time and access prior versions.

You can also access your drop box from any web browser anywhere you are, even if you don’t have your computer with you.

It’s really a great tool that has eliminated the need for me to carry a usb flash drive.

Go check it out now!

]]>https://alanchavis.com/2010/09/14/dropbox/feed/0avalanchisDealing with the latest form of DLL hellhttps://alanchavis.com/2010/08/23/dealing-with-the-latest-form-of-dll-hell/
https://alanchavis.com/2010/08/23/dealing-with-the-latest-form-of-dll-hell/#respondMon, 23 Aug 2010 16:32:44 +0000http://www.alanchavis.com/?p=122Continue reading →]]>I’m working on a project which integrates a lot of legacy C++ code in several DLLs with a C# wrapper application. Of course, the legacy code also references several third party libraries, just to make things interesting.

Everything was going well until I tried to run the application on a test VM and it displayed a very unhelpful error message:

This application has failed to start because the application configuration is incorrect. Reinstalling the application may fix this problem.

The first thing I discovered, was that in order to run exectutables on a test machine that are linked to the DEBUG versions the VC runtime libraries, I’d need to copy the appropriate folders from the C:Program FilesMicrosoft Visual Studio 9.0VCredistDebug_NonRedist folder to the executable’s directory on the test machine. Here’s some relevant information on MSDN regarding this:

Apparently, some of the third party libraries were causing the linker to reference older VC runtime library versions, so our component’s manifest file was listing multiple versions.

This was apparently what was causing the problems on the test machine.

The fix was to add the following to the pre-processor directives for each of our projects which forces everything to reference the latest runtime libraries:

_BIND_TO_CURRENT_VCLIBS_VERSION

If you run into this, pay attention to this paragraph from the accepted answer which details a great way to debug this problem:

A great way to debug which libraries don’t have the preprocessor directives set: temporarily modify your platform headers so that compilation stops when it tries to embed the old manifest. Open C:Program FilesMicrosoft Visual Studio 9.0VCcrtincludecrtassem.h. Search for the ‘21022’ string. In that define, put something invalid (change ‘define’ to ‘blehbleh’ or so). This way, when you’re compiling a project where the _BIND_TO_CURRENT_CRT_VERSION preprocessor flag is not set, your compilation will stop and you’ll know that you need to add them or made sure that it’s applied everywhere.

This tip really helped me to identify and correct the projects which where causing the problem.

It’s amazing to me how far we’ve come from the days when this type of problem was routine. With the advent of .NET, this sort of thing is rarely a problem until you try to use some old C++ libraries. I hope you never have to deal with this sort of thing!

]]>https://alanchavis.com/2010/08/23/dealing-with-the-latest-form-of-dll-hell/feed/0avalanchisLaunching your .NET app after setup completeshttps://alanchavis.com/2010/08/18/launching-your-net-app-after-setup-completes/
https://alanchavis.com/2010/08/18/launching-your-net-app-after-setup-completes/#respondWed, 18 Aug 2010 16:26:01 +0000http://www.alanchavis.com/?p=116Here’s a better way to accomplish this than what I previously posted: